


Life, Sped Up

by binarystarkillers



Series: Stephen King's Gay Subtext Has Ruined My Life [3]
Category: The Long Walk - Richard Bachman
Genre: And a Hug, Internalized Homophobia, M/M, Post-The Long Walk, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Ray Garraty needs therapy, Recovery, Stephen King didn't give me gays so I'll DO IT MYSELF, TW for PTSD and Depression!, angst angst angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-16
Updated: 2020-04-16
Packaged: 2021-03-02 02:40:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,711
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23687809
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/binarystarkillers/pseuds/binarystarkillers
Summary: The idea, once so intoxicating, was now nauseating. It’s not worth it, he thought, and was shocked by himself. Ninety-nine lives for some prosthetic feet. McVries, Baker, Olson, for some fucking prosthetic feet.
Relationships: Ray Garraty & Jan, Ray Garraty & Peter McVries, Ray Garraty/Jan, Ray Garraty/Peter McVries
Series: Stephen King's Gay Subtext Has Ruined My Life [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1663831
Comments: 6
Kudos: 16





	Life, Sped Up

The world came back to Garraty in isolated flashes, intermittent and overwhelming.

Bright. Heat. Pain.

Oh god, pain.

HIs legs started twitching as he tried to start walking again, tried to get up. Had he fallen? How long had he been out? He needed to get up before he got a ticket, he needed to move, to start walking- 

Had he already bought a ticket? If he had, this must be Hell; the screaming agony crawling up his body, and burning poison within his veins hellfire. But if he was dead, then…

“Pete?” he croaked, and the fire spread to his throat.

\- we’re losing him - 

“Pete?’

\- ray, sweetie, are you there - 

“Pete!”

\- do something! now! -

It all went black.

\--------

The world came back to him slowly this time, awareness of his surroundings gradually trickling back to him as his mind flickered back to life. Faintly, he heard the tell-tale beep of a heart monitor, a sound that took him back to his pneumonia as a child. I told the others about that, he thought dimly, and the figure slumped over itself in the chair next to him stirred.

“Raymond?”

“...Mom?”

“Oh, Ray!” she cried, and threw her arms around him. “Ray, you’re okay, I’m here, you’re safe, oh sweetie, it’s so good to see you.”

The smell of her perfume, once familiar, now seemed to reek, cloying his senses and choking him. He hadn’t smelled perfume since he had kissed that girl at the beginning of the Walk, a century ago, and it smelled strange and unfamiliar. 

“Wh… what…” he rasped, his voice failing him. His mother seemed to understand what he meant to say, and she pulled back from him, now twisting her hands together nervously. 

“The Long Walk ended three days ago. You’ve been - you’ve been sleeping since then. The doctors said you’d wake up, but,” she cut herself off, chewing on her bottom lip. “I’m just so glad you’re okay, Ray.”

Ray nodded. “Can I… can you leave me alone, please, Mom? I need a moment.”

Surprise and hurt flickered over his mother’s face, but she nodded, gathering her purse and leaving. She’d left something on the chair, he noticed, but his voice refused to work, and she shut the door behind her with a small click.

Three days, she’d said. He’d been asleep for three days. Garraty screwed his eyes shut, feeling bile rise in his throat. Three fucking days. 

God.

His legs still hurt, but it wasn’t the constant throbbing pain of the Walk, but rather a bone-deep, weary sense. From the fog of his mind, he wondered if he’d ever live without pain in his legs and feet. Maybe Barkovitch was onto something with his idea of prosthetic feet.

Maybe he should get prosthetic feet. After all, they’d give him whatever he wanted for the rest of his life. From now until he died, he’d live in comfort. Anything he wanted, he’d be given. 

The idea, once so intoxicating, was now nauseating. It’s not worth it, he thought, and was shocked by himself. Ninety-nine lives for some prosthetic feet. McVries, Baker, Olson, for some fucking prosthetic feet.

For the first time, the reality of his world caught up to him. He’d never see them again. He’d never see the way Art’s eyes lit up when he laughed, or the way Olson’s grin issued an unspoken challenge. He’d never hear the compassionate lilt of Scramm’s voice, or hear Collie’s sharp remarks again. Harkness would never write his book, Stebbins would never tell his father who he was. They were all gone. They were gone and the world kept spinning, pulling Garraty along for the ride.

And Christ, this hurt the most, he’d never see McVries again. Pete couldn’t make any more smartass jokes, or end any more fights. He couldn’t make Ray feel calm with only a few words, couldn’t talk him through endless nights anymore. He’d never rub his victory into Priscilla’s face, or see his little sister again. She’s just a kid, Garraty remembered, and the gnawing feeling inside his ribcage doubled. Katrina was just a kid, and she’d never see her brother again, because Pete was never coming home. His eyes couldn’t crinkle up when Garraty drew a smile out of him, because he’d never smile again, because he was dead, he was dead, he was gone, and Garraty was all that was left, and he didn’t want to be.

Ray leaned over the side of his hospital bed and vomited, the sting of pain bringing tears to his eyes that kept rolling down until awful, guilty tears were streaming down his face as nurses came running in, the click of their shoes against the shiny hospital floors the only sound he could hear over the numbing taste of loss.

His mother was talking to him, her voice tight with tears. “Ray, sweetie, talk to me. Please, tell me what to do, please, I don’t know what to do, please.”

The words came out childishly simple, but he couldn't say anything else.

“They’re gone.”

“Oh, Ray, I know.”

Ray laughed, deliriously cruel. “No, you don’t. You really fucking don’t.”

His mother frowned, opening her mouth like she was going to say something, before snapping it shut. “You’re right,” she said, and tears were brimming in her eyes again. Standing up, she began to make her way outside again, before her eyes slid over the chair and the hoodie that lay on it. 

“I, uh,” she began, picking it up. “The thing is…”

“What?”

“Sarah McVries gave this to me,” she said, turning around again and shakily extending the hoodie to Ray. “She asked me to give it to you.”

Ray stared at it for a second, and thought he was going to throw up again. “Thank you,” he rasped, and she placed it gingerly on the side of his bed.

“I’ll be right outside if you need me,” she said, and Garraty nodded. Awkwardly, she hesitated a second before dropping a kiss on his forehead and patting him on the shoulder before leaving. She didn’t shut the door all the way this time, and he was thankful for that crack.

The sweater seemed to taunt him. It had been washed, but Garraty knew it well enough that he could chart the now-missing stains from memory, or sketch them in his sleep. There had been dirt splatters on the back from kicking up mud off his heels and Barkovitch flicking it at him as he walked. There had been sweat stains on the cuffs, too, from McVries mopping sweat off of his forehead under the harsh Maine sun. And there was…

Garraty wrenched his eyes away from the shoulder of the sweater, fingernails digging into his palms as he tried to beat away the memory of what had stained that sweater, the way crimson had sunk into the teal fabric. For one blinding second, he wanted to go find Sarah McVries and slap her, because he knew the truth. This wasn’t a gift to their son’s friend. It wasn’t an act of kindness. They just didn’t want the sweater he’d died in. I held him, he’d scream at her. I held him before he died, I was there. I heard the gunshot. You’re as sick as the Major for giving me this.

Tentatively, he reached out for the sweater, pausing at the last minute as if it would burn him. His fingertips brushed against the fabric of the sweater, and Ray swallowed the lump in his throat as his hand curled around it, slowly pulling it closer to him as he struggled to sit up properly. 

It felt the same way it had the last time he had touched it. Of course it did. 

“No! No! Me! Me! Shoot me!”

He could taste the fear on his tongue, and for one second, one beautiful, awful second, he could have sworn he was holding McVries in his hands.

The sweater flapped pathetically through the air, landing in a graceless heap right below the bed. 

“Mom?” he croaked, and immediately, she was in the room. She must have been waiting outside, he realized, and felt an ugly stab of anger. She probably likes seeing you so helpless. You need her now.

“Yes?”

“When’s Jan getting here?”

\--------

“Hey, Ray. How are you feeling?”

It was almost funny, he thought. The last time he’d seen Jan, he had almost died. He’d all but thrown himself at her, clinging to her hands like he was drowning and she was going to save him, going to pull him out of the sea of Crowd and the tide of the Walk and take him somewhere where he could finally breathe.

He had hated McVries for saving him, hated him so much that in that moment, McVries became interchangeable with the soldiers behind him. Monster, he had thought. You don’t understand. How could he? McVries wasn’t like him, and Priscilla hadn’t just scarred his face with her letter opener.

It hadn’t been that long since he and Jan had seen each other, but something had shifted astronomically. The two-foot gap between where she stood and his hospital bed seemed much larger, filled with something ancient and yet fragile. They stood at the edges of it, terrified to move closer or away, to do anything that would break the delicate balance between the two of them.

Jan cleared her throat, her blonde hair falling over her shoulder as she shyly ducked her head. Somehow, she even made that elegant. “I brought movies,” she said, her voice feather-light. “I thought we could watch them, if you were feeling up for it? Maybe? I don’t know, it’s stupid, I’m sorry, I-”

Garraty reached forward, grunting in pain as his torso shifted. The silence broken, Jan sat next to him, smoothing her skirt out before she took Garraty’s hand in the other. “Here,” she said, undoing the clasps of her crossbody bag and taking a few DVDs out. “You choose.”

“DVDs? How retro,” he said with a thin smile, “And no rom-coms? Who are you, and what have you done to Jan?”

“You’re the one in the hospital.”

Ray’s smile faltered, his sudden good mood dispelled. “Huh. Yeah. Thanks. Hey, why don’t you pick a movie? Surprise me.”

Jan grinned at him and he looked away, a hot feeling of bizarre guilt twisting in his gut.

The DVD tray clicked back as Jan sat on the edge of his bed again. 

“Ray?”

“Yeah?”

“Can I lie down, or would that hurt you?”

“Uh, sure.”

Jan swung her legs onto the bed and gingerly leaned back onto his shoulder. “Am I hurting you?”

“No,” he answered, wrapping an arm around her. If Jan heard his voice crack, she didn’t say anything, and he was thankful.

Not long after the opening credits ended, Jan’s eyes began to droop. Soon after, her breathing completely evened out, and he could feel her breath against his throat, rhythmic. She must be tired, he thought, suddenly pitying the girl. This must be horrible for her, too.

The movie that Jan had chosen was one that they’d seen before - he’d dragged her out to see it in theatres when it came out. It was some dumb slasher flick without any plot beyond blood and guts, and most of what he remembered was Jan hiding into his shoulder as he bit back laughter as she tried not to shriek. He’d bought her an apology milkshake afterwards at some dingy retro diner, and they’d spent the rest of the night dancing along to ancient songs blaring from a decrepit jukebox. It had been a good night, he remembered. He’d felt like a real American man, like he finally was who he was supposed to be.

When he had seen the movie, he hadn’t even flinched. He’d watched blood and guts flying without being fazed at all.

On-screen, a sniper was creeping through the halls as the hero hid behind a desk, eyes wide and terrified. The hero let out a harsh exhale, and the sniper turned to face the desk, aiming his gun silently.

3…

2…

1…

Garraty screamed. 

“Ray! Ray, what’s going on?”

Jan’s eyes flickered to the TV and the pile of prosthetics in corn syrup that used to be the hero’s head and her eyes widened almost comically as she jumped up, turning the TV off.

“Ray, babe, I’m so sorry, oh my God. Oh my God, I didn’t think, I didn’t even realize, I’m so sorry,” she babbled tearfully, pulling him into a hug, and it was wrong, all wrong, she was wrong-

“Don’t touch me,” he gasped, hands twisting wildly in the air. He had started crying, pathetically, but he couldn’t bring himself to stop. His vision and hearing were beginning to tunnel again, and he repeated it. “Please don’t touch me.”

It was as if his mouth had stopped working, no, his face, the muscles all lax and unwilling to move as he tried to force himself to speak. 

He saw a flash of familiar teal fabric, and his traitorous face began to twist into a smile before he noticed blonde hair and the smell of hand sanitizer. “No,” he mumbled through numb lips, before the world swum into blackness.

\--------

The experience of waking up disoriented in a hospital room was becoming far too familiar for Garraty’s tastes. It was a carbon copy of the same old dance; he was sitting up and saw the speckled tiles first, before looking up to the new figure in the faded office chair next to his hospital bed, standing out against the backdrop of what was maybe blue a long time ago. The figure, as it always had, flashed a smile at him, but this time, it wasn’t a grimace, a farce of happiness, but just a smile.

“Hey there, Garraty,” McVries said, stretching languorously in the chair. “Gotta be honest with you, darling, you look like shit.” 

“Pete-”

“That’s me.”

“God, you’re irritating,” Garraty laughed, a stupid feeling of relief overtaking him as he exhaled for what felt like the first time in days, the tension dropping out of him. 

McVries looked offended. “Show some respect. I am dead, you know.”

As quickly as the tension had left him, it returned. His throat closed up and he coughed, wincing as the tube in his throat moved.

“Damn, Ray, don’t push yourself so hard! Don’t want you getting killed on my account, although I am flattered to know that you’re so eager to be with me again.”

Ray looked away, pulling his knees to his chest. “You don’t want anything.”

“Now that’s just offensive.”

Ray threw his arm out, nearly tearing an IV out in the process. “So, what? You just decided to come back? Thought, what the fuck, Ray’s life can’t get any worse, huh?”

McVries didn’t reply.

“Tormenting me in real life wasn’t enough? Are you even going to say anything? Or is the late, great, Peter McVries finally at a loss for words?”

“Do you want me to say anything?” His voice was softer than Garraty had ever heard it, and it only made him angrier.

“Fuck you.”

A dry chuckle. “Only if you’re offering.”

McVries had sat up properly, his elbows resting on his knees as he leaned forward, a strand of dark hair falling in his eyes. Something about him was off, though, tugging at Garraty’s mind like a dream he couldn’t quite place.

“Just fuck off.”

McVries stood up, and shrugged. “Fair enough,” he said. “It ain’t a letter opener, but that army of strings you’re attached to look pretty sharp.”

He made his way to the door, the same way that Garraty’s mother had earlier.

“Wait,” Garraty blurted, and McVries turned back instantly.

“Yes?”

“Are you… real? Or are you just in my head?”

McVries smiled, and crossed the room again. “Oh, Ray,” he murmured, and before Garraty could do anything, he leaned forward, pressing his lips to the corner of his mouth. 

As darkness began to paint its shadowy hues across Ray’s vision once again, feeling and sight fading away, he heard Pete’s answer, clear as day:

“Does it really matter?”

\--------

“What’s your name?”

“Garraty.”

“Your full name.”

“Raymond Davis Garraty.”

“How old are you, Mr. Garraty?”

“I’m seventeen.”

“Mhm, and when is your birthday?”

Ray answered, resisting the urge to roll his eyes. “June the 28th.”

The psychiatrist seemed to notice his boredom, because she hummed again, noting something quickly before speaking again. “Almost done. Just a few more questions. What are your parents’ names? What is the date today? And when is our next election?”

Garraty nodded. “My mother’s name is Miranda Garraty, it’s June 18th, and the election is on November 20th.”

“And your father’s name?”

“My mother’s name is Miranda Garraty,” he repeated, unblinking.

The psychiatrist smiled openly at that, nodding approvingly as she marked something else on her tablet. Her tablet was grey - everything was in that room: the walls, the floor, the table, her pantsuit. The grey seemed to sink into the table, creeping into his fingertips and threatening to stain him with the clinical grey.

“Well, Mr. Garraty, you have passed the physical tests,” she said, fingers flying over the screen, pulling up stats and charts at a nearly inhuman speed. 

“And?” Garraty fought to keep his voice neutral and his eyes trained on her. He couldn’t see any cameras, but he knew they were there: a team of scientists noting each twitch, every microexpression he made. The wall behind the psychiatrist looked like something right out of an old-timey movie, one where men in suits would slide folders across the sleek table and tell the prisoner that ‘there are two ways we can do this.’ It was thin and shiny, and Garrty knew that his mother was waiting behind it, wringing her hands together nervously.

“You will have to continue your scheduled therapy sessions, but,” she looked him in the eye for the first time. Her eyes were green. “Congratulations, Mr. Garraty.”

The door behind him swung open - grey steel, of course - and a soldier waiting outside beckoned Garraty, who quickly thanked the psychiatrist before standing and leaving the room. The soldier nodded once at him before breaking into a quick march, one that Garraty nearly had to jog to keep up with.

“Have we met?” Garraty asked, finding the rhythm of the pace. The soldier stopped and looked at him for one long moment, utterly expressionless. Garraty stared back, resisting the urge to break eye contact or to fold in on himself; something about the man’s stare made him feel unsafe, like a dying rodent watching a vulture circle overhead.

The soldier started walking again, and Garraty bit his lip, picking up the pace. Before long, they approached a set of glass doors, and Garraty could see his mother pacing nervously in the foyer on the other side. The soldier pushed the door open, and his mother beamed, pulling him into a quick hug. 

“Oh, this is so amazing, I’m so proud of you!” She exclaimed, pulling back to assess him. Seeming to like what she saw, she smiled again, before turning to the soldier, who silently handed her a slim folder of paper documents.

“Thank you,” she said, one arm wrapped around Garraty’s shoulders, and he nodded. Then, he turned to Garraty and nodded. Garraty nodded back, a goodbye, and turned to leave with his mother.

As they exited the building, Garraty caught sight of the soldier in a mirror atop the door. Their eyes met, and the soldier nodded again, hand straying to rest on his belt.

Garraty didn’t react until they were in the safety of his mother’s car, two miles away from the building. “Did you bring it?” he asked, and damn it, his voice shook. His mother glanced away from the road, eyebrows pulling together in concern.

“Bring what, sweetie?”

“The sweater.”

His mother’s mouth fell into an ‘o’, and she hesitated a second before nodding. 

“It’s in my duffel bag. Ray-”

“I know.”

“You know what would happen if they found out you still have it.”

“Damn it, mom, I know.”

His mother recoiled as if he’d slapped her, before hesitating. “I understand, Ray,” she said softly, “I just want you to be careful.”

“Yeah,” Garraty said, looking out the window. “Just wanted to make sure that you had it.”

“Well, I do.”

He nodded jerkily, a mannequin’s mimic of the nod the soldier had given him earlier. Soldiers stood on street corners, sweeping bored eyes at passerbys as they drove by. Their uniforms were different than the one that the compound soldier had worn as he’d accompanied Garraty - the ones worn by the street officers were green and black, had coffee stains and rumpled collars on them, the wear and tear of humanity. It was a stark contrast to the grey-green uniform of the soldier, which, like everything in the hospital and compound, had been perfect; freshly-starched and beat into perfection, not a strand of ginger hair out of place.

He should have recognized him instantly. It wasn’t the blond who had nearly given him his ticket - those pale eyes were forever seared into his memory. No, this was worse. He hadn’t noticed the ginger soldier until it was too late, his features sliding together beneath a veil of tears. 

No! Me! Me! Shoot me! 

He’d looked at Garraty when he’d brought him to his mother exactly the same way he’d looked at McVries before bringing him to his death.

“Ray?”

Garraty looked up, frowning. He’d lost all sense of time between highways and passing trees, and he hadn’t noticed the transition to the pumpy pavement of the suburbs.

“Yeah?”

“We’re here.”

Tentatively, Ray reached for the door handle, a sense of morbid fascination running through him as he stepped onto his driveway. It had only been a few months since he had last been at home, but it might have been a century. The house seemed smaller, the grounds unfamiliar, and the memories of childhood games might have belonged to somebody else.

“Do you want to see your room?”

“Sure.”

His mother spoke non-stop as she lead him to his bedroom, a constant stream of updates on people who had turned to blurry yearbook photos in his mind. Eventually, she paused outside his door.

“I kept it just the same,” she said, beaming with pride as she pushed the door open.

The wealth of emotions Garraty felt made him double back as if he’d been punched in the gut. The little room he looked into was teeming with memories. IT had clearly been cleaned since he had last been inside it: the floor was clear, and his desk had been dusted, but otherwise, his room was exactly as he’d left it.

In a trance, he drifted towards his chest of drawers. There was a triangular banner pinned to the wall above it, the kind that high school football players had won in the 1950s, before running to the stands to kiss their girl. To his left, his denim jacket was still draped over his desk chair. Jan had bought him that jacket for him to wear on the Walk, but he’d left it at home at the last minute, worried that it would get ruined and be a waste of Jan’s money. Not that was something he needed to worry about, though; Jan was well-off, buying the nicest dresses and hair products that made her hair soft and cherry-scented. 

His phone was face-down atop the chest of drawers, and Garraty half-smiled as he turned it on. Phones were one of the restricted items on the Walk, as their signals disrupted the electronic sensors. At the time, Garraty hadn’t thought twice about it, but now it seemed sort of… telling. The Major wasn’t foolproof after all, he thought. He could be beat by a fucking smartphone.

“Well?” his mother asked. “What do you think, sweetie?”

“Thank you,” he said, turning back, and was surprised to find that he meant it. 

“Do you want some time alone to settle in?”

Garraty properly smiled, a bit of the weight he carried around lifting. 

“Yeah, that’d be great, thanks.”

“No worries, Ray. Your stuff is downstairs, you can come get it at dinner.”

The door shut, and Garraty sat on the edge of his bed as his phone finished loading.

His old friends had teased him mercilessly about his lockscreen when they’d first seen it, but he hadn’t cared. He’d taken that photo on his and Jan’s anniversary, seven months ago. The background of the park they were in was visible, but the focus of the shot was on him and Jan, kissing under an oak tree. That date had been something out of a movie, a picnic with wine and flowers, and Jan had been thrilled.

Loading his home screen, Garraty’s eyes widened. He had thousands of notifications spanning across the two months without his phone: friends and acquaintances wishing him luck, classmates he’d never spoken to sending him congratulations, and a plethora of more recent messages asking him if he was around, and if he wanted to hang out.

He tapped out a reply to one of the messages and then paused, his thumb hovering over the ‘send’ button. The short reply seemed unfeeling and impersonal, the kind of automatic response you’d receive from a celebrity’s marketing team. Deleting the message, he turned his phone off, placing it atop his desk and flopping backwards so he was lying on his back, staring up at the ceiling. Thoughts drifted through his head, far away so that he was only vaguely aware of their existence at all. 

\--------

“Ray? Ray, Kyle called. He wants to know if you want to come to his family’s barbecue tomorrow.”

“Tell him I’m not feeling well, sorry.”

\--------

“Jonah called. Says you’re not answering your phone.”

\--------

“Dylan’s organizing a get-together on Sunday! Your whole class is invited.”

\--------

“Sweetie, Jan’s here! She brought brownies.”

“I can’t today. I’m tired, all right?”

\--------

“... and I’m worried about him, Doctor Hayes. He doesn’t eat, he doesn’t go out, and he doesn’t talk to anyone but he’s always on his phone. He’s either always sleeping, or he never does.”

There was a pause, and then:

“No, he doesn’t, but he’s always so angry. He gets mad at the smallest things, and he used to yell a lot. Now he’s just kind of… quiet.  
…  
No, nobody. He doesn’t reply to any messages, and the only letter he’s read was from Cathy Scramm. I don’t know what to do, Doctor. I just want my son back.”

Having heard enough, Garraty closed the bathroom door again, looking back at the mirror. 

The face staring back at him belonged to a stranger. Blank, shrunken eyes stared back at him from hollow sockets made of greying skin hanging from his cheekbones.

He pulled the corners of his mouth up, and the creature smiled at him.

\--------

“When I was in the Long Walk, someone told me that it was because I wanted to die. But they were wrong. I was on the Walk because I wanted to live.”

He’d been staring at his hands while he spoke, but he forced himself to look up and make eye contact as he continued.

“Because the Walk is kind of just… life, sped up. You suffer, you laugh. You make friends, and then lose them. You get born, and you die.” 

His eyes dropped back down. “You fall in love.”

“Ray, I came here to break up with you.”

Garraty’s head snapped up, eyes wide. Jan looked nervous, but there was a resolved set to her shoulders, and her eyes were steady.

“What?”

Jan sighed, running a hand through her long hair. “I wanted to be there for you, to help you. I think that’s- I think that’s why I stayed so long. But I can’t do it anymore, so… I came here to end it.” She laughed, awkward. “But I guess there’s nothing to end.”

“I guess not.”

“Yeah.”

“Yeah.”

“Ray-”

“Jan-”

They both chuckled, and some of the tension in the room broke.

“Go ahead,” Ray said, and Jan smiled at him. It was small and unsure, but it was there.

“Can I still come over?”

“Of course,” he answered, not hesitating. Jan had an odd way of roundabout speaking, where in situations where she was afraid of coming off as impolite or rude, she’d say one thing and mean another. It had taken him a while to figure it out, but he understood that question instantly. Are we still friends? 

“Besides,” he added, “you got my mom hooked on your brownies.”

\--------

The next time Jan came over, she was wearing an oversized letterman jacket over her university hoodie, and her grin was blinding. “Ms. Garraty!” she called as she took her shoes off. “I brought cookies.”

The woman in question was in the kitchen, waiting by a hissing kettle. “Please, dear, for the millionth time, call me Miranda,” she said, taking the offered container. “Raymond is in the living room, by the way.”

Ray was sprawled across a new couch in Pete’s old hoodie, reading. He looked up when she arrived and immediately folded the corner of his page, breaking out into a smile. “Hey,” he said, pushing himself up so she could sit down.

“You look cheery,” she commented, and Ray shrugged.

“Good day.”

“I’m glad.”

“Hang on,” he said, eyes locked on her jacket. “Who’s is that?”

Jan flushed pink, and she shrugged the jacket off. “Adam’s,” she mumbled. 

“Adam from chem last year? Holy shit!”

“Language,” Miranda called from the kitchen. “Who’s Adam?”

Ray froze, instantly going rigid. “Nobody,” he said. “Just someone we went to school with.”

His mother hummed, but didn’t comment, only asking: “Jan, do you want coffee?”

“Um, yes, please,” she said, before turning to Ray. “What the fuck was that?” she hissed, and he held up a finger, eyes apologetic. 

Five minutes later, they sat in Ray’s room clutching warm cups of coffee, the sunlight falling in strips through his blinds. 

“What the hell happened back down there?”

Ray’s left hand was clenching and unclenching, and he refused to meet her eyes. She understood, then, what she should have instantly: he was afraid.

Softening, she tried again.

“You can tell me. I know about Pete, don’t I?”

There was something nearly feral in his eyes, in the tense coil of his body. For a second, she was nearly afraid of him, and what he could do, but he began to speak instead, halting and broken. 

“I- When I was a kid- I used to-”

“Slow down,” she interrupted, reaching a hand out and then retracting it when he flinched. 

“Sorry,” he mumbled.

“It’s okay. Do you want to try again?”

Jerkily, he nodded.

“Okay.”

“When I was a kid, I had this - friend. His name was Jimmy Owens. He was my best friend.”

He couldn’t sit still, eyes flitting around the room as he spoke, and his coffee was definitely burning his palm where he held it, but he seemed not to have noticed. With a sinking feeling, she began to understand something about his fear: it was somehow linked to both her and the late Pete. It was something he must have carried with him his whole life, and he’d clearly never told anyone about it before.

Gaining speed, he continued.

“We liked to play uh, imaginary games together. Like, we’d play superheroes, or wizards, or - whatever. And um, one day we decided to- to play doctor.”

The coffee in his cup was beginning to ripple.

“And we decided that whoever the patient was should, uh- should take their clothes off. Because you can’t operate with clothes on. And my mom, she found us. And we were just kids,” he said, looking beseechingly at her, begging her to understand. “We were just kids. We didn’t understand. We didn’t understand. But when she found us, we were, uh, wewerebothhard,” he said in a rush, words almost unintelligible. “She freaked out. She told me I was never allowed to see Jimmy again. She said that if something like this ever happened again, she’d - she’d make me walk down the street without any clothes on for everyone to see.”

Jan brought a hand to her mouth, eyes prickling with tears. Ray looked like one strong gust of wind could take him apart, and there were thin, watery brown streaks running down his arm where drops of coffee had spilled from the shaking cup. 

“I didn’t tell her we broke up,” he said, wincing. “She already thinks it’s weird that I still have the sweater, but-”

“You don’t want her to figure it out,” Jan finished, and he nodded.

It wasn’t the first time that they’d sat in silence since Ray came back from the Long Walk, but it was by far the heaviest. The weight of Ray’s secret seemed to hang in the air between them, pulsating and alive.

“I’m so sorry,” she whispered, and it was like a dam broke.

\--------

Now that Jan knew the truth, she came over a lot more. Sometimes she’d bring baked goods, but most of the time she just brought company and stories, which were welcome. There were also times where she’d just come over with her phone or a book, and they’d sit in companionable silence for hours. She’d stopped taking no for an answer, entering the house and forcing Ray to have some modicum of human interaction no matter what he said to her or how angry he grew.

“What made you decide to break up with me when you did?” she asked one disgustingly cold February evening. 

Garraty took a moment to reply. “You shouldn’t have to compete with a ghost.”

“You shouldn’t have to live like one.”

Neither of them spoke for the rest of the night.

\--------

The ceiling seemed smug, somehow. The peeling beige paint seemed derisive, mocking the boy watching it. The boy alone in his bed, spinning through space with no real sense of direction. Garraty had improved, the colour returning to his face and his body no longer resembling a gaunt skeleton. Smiling began to feel natural again, and his cheeks didn’t ache or twitch oddly when he smiled. Bit by bit, colour had seeped back into his life, emotions returning to him in tiny increments until he could feel again.

But in horrible, traitorous moments like this, he found himself wishing that he had never learned to feel again, just to avoid this. His old friends had eventually stopped calling, and the messages had stopped. The world kept on turning, but without ninety-nine faces that were burned into his mind. It brought him back months to when he first came home, spending hours looking at the Instagram pages of dead boys, the smiling faces of Baker and Olson and McVries taunting him. Against his will, the old chant began again.

James Baker. Collie Parker. George Fielder. Bill Hough. Rattigan. Scramm. Pearson. Travin. Joe. Mike. Fenter. Toland. Aaronson. Abraham. Art Baker. Curley. Gary Barkovitch. Ewig. Davidson. Percy. Roger Fenum. Zuck. Gribble. Larson. Klingerman. Tressler. Marty Wyman. Wayne. Yannick. Charlie Field. Stebbins. Pete McVries. 

A collection of names, each name one that used to belong to a person who had once laughed and loved and cried. They’d lived, until they’d made the decision to fast-track their life by four miles an hour and lived in fast-forward, right into the embrace of green-wearing reapers. 

When he’d been dating Jan, he thought he was in love. He thought that love had meant safety and warmth. He thought it meant milkshakes in diners, and warm brownies. He thought it meant his mother’s approval, and chaste, quick pecks to the cheek. He thought love was slow and smelled like cherries. 

That had been turned on its head with dizzying speed. Love wasn’t slow, or sweet. It was raw, and painful. You don’t fall in love; you fall towards something beautiful and terrifying, something that wrecks you and keeps you coming back for more. It was rough and dangerous. It was bloody and scarred and broken.

Love meant broken promises and rough hands. It meant pithy comments and hysterical laughter. It meant mud and sweat. It meant rain and blood. It was delirium; a sense of wonder and terror setting into you. It’s a knife that you plunge into your own chest, a gaping hole waiting to be created.

\--------

When he woke up, he felt patched, like there was something encasing him, and it was beginning to crack. Jan’s words from weeks ago echoed in his head, and he felt another hairline crack shoot through. You shouldn’t have to live like a ghost.

There were no limits to the Prize, after all. He had unlimited money, endless resources. His mother didn’t need him financially - their house had been renovated, and he’d given her enough money that she didn’t need to work another day in her life. He’d broken up with Jan. A year of complete isolation had alienated any friends he had. His all-American life had been dismantled piece by piece. 

He’d joined the Long Walk to get a taste of life, and he’d started aching for freedom the second he felt it. He’d managed to escape from the Walk, but he couldn’t escape from his mannequin’s mould of a life. Even in the Walk, where rules barely applied to them, he hadn’t managed to escape from it. He wondered if the others had seen right through him, if they’d seen how wrong everything about him was even before he did. Stebbins had known. It was why he’d hated Stebbins and his devil-may-care attitude and knowing eyes. Stebbins had seen the mould, and he’d made some guesses. He’d wanted to kill Stebbins for it, but his anger and his disgust about what Stebbins had said had planted the first seeds of doubt about his entire life, instead of just about Jan. Yes, Stebbins had seen the mould.

But Pete had seen through it. He’d seen how plastic Garraty’s life was, but he’d also seen the boy underneath. He didn’t know everything about Garraty’s life, but he knew him better than anybody ever had. McVries had driven him up the wall, but from the first moment they met, Ray would have done anything for him. McVries had seen right through him, and he still stuck around, making filthy jokes and pushing his buttons until he felt like an extension of Garraty himself. 

Garraty had never felt any emotion as intensely as he felt terror grip him when Pete sat down. He’d been walking towards the end of the road, but he had also been walking away from memories; the guilt that twisted when Jan kissed him, or Jimmy fucking Owens, and Pete had made all of it go away. As long as Peter McVries was by his side, Garraty could have taken on the world with bruised and bloody feet.

You shouldn’t have to live like a ghost.

The mould shattered.

\--------

“Ray, sweetie, listen-”

“What, mom?” Ray asked, shutting the car trunk. 

“There’s still time to change your mind.”

Garraty laughed, pushing his sweaty hair off of his face. “I’ve already paid for it. I’ve got to go.”

“Well, I don’t like it,” she sniffed, and Garraty laughed, pulling her into a quick hug. 

“Mom, I’ll be fine. I’m not moving to Russia, okay? I can still come down for Christmas and summer break.”

“You’re moving to Canada!”

“It’ll take less time for me to get back then it will that time we drove to New York. And you always wanted me to go to college, didn’t you? Better starting a year late than never.”

“Well, yes, but-”

“Mom. I’m eighteen. I’ll be okay.”

For a moment, he thought she was going to argue again, but instead she just hugged him again. “Take care of yourself,” she said, sniffling. “I’ll see you at Christmas.”

“See you at Christmas,” he echoed, and got in the car.

The leaves were still green, and he could see birds flying overhead. Rolling down the window, he grinned and turned on the radio.

The road seemed to stretch on forever.

**Author's Note:**

> ...woah. I'm finally done this. This feels a little unreal.
> 
> This fic took so long, and even though it's not very lengthy, it was very challenging to write. In The Long Walk, we see very limited glimpses into the lives of the walkers, and so a lot of the characterization of the characters in this was my personal interpretation, whilst also trying to stay true to the tone of the novel. The same thing goes for the use of technology in this fic - TLW is supposed to take place in a nebulous 'near-future', but since it was published in 1979, I decided to add some more modern technology. 
> 
> As always, I'm on Tumblr as binarystarkillers! Feel free to drop by and say hello. <3


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